Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (04/12/2022)

001[Music] here glad you came right zach yeah yeah but i did i could be dirty again yesterday yeah yeah it was a great service last sunday we'll be there big ones yep like to call to order please the board of education meeting for saline area schools for april 12 20 22 at 6 30 pm if everyone could please rise for our pledge of allegiance i pledge states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right happy april welcome back from spring break and hello to all of our wonderful guests um because we do have a lot of students with us this evening and they're holding their instruments and they're ready to go um we pulled our student showcase up into the

002front of our program so whenever you are ready [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] huh [Music] uh huh [Music] hmm [Music] come on [Applause] [Music] do [Music] my [Music] this [Music] uh foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] now [Music] so so well done if that doesn't make you want to dance and smile i don't think anything will would you like to say a couple of words mr lampman about your group so much for the opportunity to play tonight we meet at 6 45 in the morning tuesday thursday mornings and we don't get to play for anybody so complain for real people is really really fun so thanks for being an audience for welcoming us tonight and hopefully you're going to be seeing us around in the community more soon as we get more of

003those opportunities coming up so wonderful beer tonight thank you so much excellent i see i see a lot of proud parents and guardians out there so congratulations and thank you again now is our first opportunity for public comment please a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or requests to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that students will be given a priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment the presiding officer is guided by the rules set forth in policy 167.3 which has been

004reprinted on the public comment form collected this evening individuals addressing the board should take into consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student i have two forms for first public comment both from parents and seeing no students we will go to parent number one danielle gillespie oh i'm i'm sorry thank you trustee miller um if you all would like to to get up and leave we could ask mrs gillespie if she could just pause for a second you are welcome to stay but i'm sure you have homework activities and in practicing thank you so much jenny thank you they were they were very polite i get rolling and all right and thank you for waiting

005student lead all right whenever you're ready danielle it okay just here is a concerned student athlete mother just asking if you guys could please maybe delve a little deeper into the volleyball situation that's going right now we have a lot of families at least friends that are on the team the investigation seemed a little poorly handled but just to bring it to your attention i don't even know if you guys even know anything about it um but that is all just wanted to bring it to your attention maybe making an action item next board meeting i know a lot of the parents couldn't be here tonight so i said i'll just kind of slip a notification into everybody but the mental health situation isn't great and i do know a few of the girls personally

006who are in counseling and or still having issues and they deserve a voice to be heard and unfortunately they couldn't be here tonight but if we could maybe look into that a little closer as board members as representatives of the community that would be greatly appreciated because i'm sure we all have little kids that might get there someday and if it's tolerated in volleyball who knows what other sport it's tolerated in so that is all thank you very much thank you very much for your feedback i failed to mention that secretary jones with public comment at 30 seconds out we'll show the yellow card and at three minutes we'll show the red card so if you can complete your thought we would appreciate it next we have parent jen scarpati okay and whenever you're ready

007to speak if you can make sure the mic is on some very concerning things have been brought to my attention this week with volleyball wrestling and the overall treatment of the teams and our student athletes we send our children here to selene and we have trusted you with them and celine dropped the ball allowing these student-athletes to be harassed intimidated and bullied that coach should have been fired immediately following the concussion of the young lady as written in the report after reading that report from mali i urge this board to stop saying this is an hr issue and get involved if you want i have all the files in the report here too as well was given to me celine sent out a survey for information on trusted adults within saline schools i don't know

008whether to laugh because of the lack of awareness on your part or to cry your lack of transparency should give any parent pause here's a perfect example back in august when parents emailed about why not a survey to see where everyone is unmasking and the return to learn that was met with a resounding no from latch mr latch dr latch and the board backing this and giving total control to our superintendent with that reasoning steve was masking these students he was making these decisions because of health and safety well in that report you'll see we weren't we have and continue to for the health department regularly since sas charges ridiculous and unethical fees to keep parents from information in the foia i made a copy of to for you guys steve is looking for the

009health department to arrest and scare parents that came to meetings on masts 3 out of 50. health and safety i don't think so meanwhile everywhere else we were all we all went all of us we didn't have to mask we only had a mask in school so was this really about health and safety we know now it wasn't i urge you as a board to do your due diligence and look at what this employee has done and i urge you to foia the washington health department or you can maybe ask our superintendent who won't charge you the parent for your pricing and just because you can do something doesn't mean you should maybe he took a page from the board because i i was under on i'm under the assumption and i was told by

010tran that the board was looking at arresting parents that were looking to take get pictures of you guys unmasked while you were masking our students they lost another whole year of normalcy these are the adults our kids are supposed to trust which brings me to my final question mr mcvay where is the apology you promised our community the february board meeting about masks afterwards you came and talked to us parents saying you were going to apologize i have emailed i haven't heard back but other parents were told that there was going to be an apology and that this was not the way it kind of came out when our own board member amplifies a violent comment and doesn't apologize what are we supposed to do this lack of transparency the culture of hypocrisy does not

011warrant any trust from us as parents or our children if that same comment was flipped around and said by say me or another parent who didn't want our kids in masks you would have been on the phone with the police yet we have a board member that says it and people are laughing at it and we're supposed to trust you i just want you to know that jack scar patty his two parents are who he trusts that's it in closing i would urge you to look into these things with the health department because in the beginning of october it was illegal the mass mandate and we all knew if you could complete your comments sure yesterday chelsea chelsea's board was served with a lawsuit from what i hear this could happen to us the truth

012always comes out no matter what the cost of the foia is thank you for your feedback i have no response to previous public comment besides email us at sas board at salineschools.org or use the let's talk app and thank you for communicating with your board i'd like to move on now to our agenda revisions and approval of the agenda items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the agenda as agenda as printed so moved miller thank you jenny support e-step thank you susan all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries

0137-0 um moving on to our first scheduled report of the evening continue to learn plan featuring weber bless highlights uh dr lodge and our guests cheryl charlie and chloe okay we are going to be doing a brief continue to learn plan update which is um i believe ben is getting up on the screens here in just a minute and that will be a a coveted update on where we are in the district and then after that i'm going to turn it over to our special guests which are cheryl charlie and chloe so we're looking forward to that okay as ben's not quite yet we're going to do we're going to do the other element element first and then and then i'll turn it over okay so um generally i'll um do you want to get

014it i'll tell you what we'll do let me bring my last cop okay so uh this is brief today but um in a pattern that we've been doing at each of the board meetings i'm giving a brief covet update as we have come back for spring break we are seeing a little spike in cases throughout washington county however as you look at the next slide you're going to see that our dashboard has remained in in fairly good shape here in other words yes we have some students out and some staff out with covid however this this is not an extreme number uh in comparison to what we saw last spring break for example and so i i do think it speaks to um we've we're all learning how to uh deal and and cope with

015with covid and we're moving forward appropriately in the district and in the community and i think this is positive data as we move forward uh the next slide talks a little bit about how nurse hervey has organized free at home covid tests in this backpack program in consultation with the michigan and health and human services and in essen essence it allows parents to choose to have these rapid tests sent home in backpacks that that families can choose to access whenever they want and so there's currently a sign up process going on where families can elect to have these coming home to opt into this program and then the next and last slide talks a little bit about our district dashboard we've had this posted for the last several years we are starting to phase out

016it's no longer required and that effective this friday we'll be phasing out the dashboard along with many other districts throughout michigan but that doesn't mean we're not continuing to track covet activity we certainly are we're reporting any positive cases that come into the district and then as a result i'm also going to be scaling back these presentations with covet updates i can report relevant things that develop but there won't be the scheduled continue to learn covet update anymore moving forward at board meetings so with that said we're going to move right on to the next presentation which i'm very excited about and that is going to be cheryl charlie and chloe to lead us through not only what weber bliss is all about but a little bit of enactment as well so come on up

017good evening for those of you who do not know me i'm cheryl left i was a teacher in saline high school until i retired in 1994 and i have continued to be involved in this district in a variety of aspects so you see me around and therefore i've gotten to know a lot of you because of that but tonight i'm here to talk about weber bliss school because during cobin we did some unique things and we wanted to familiarize you with that so with that introduction weber bliss school one room is now in session donated by milton and janet wiedmeyer this one-room school was moved from the corner of ellsworth and gensley road district 13 lodi township washington county state of michigan it was one of the last 40 schools in the saline school district

018that continued to exist today it was formally known as the saline school district before consolidation and until 1955 it served as the education facility for the rural farm children like myself and we received our education there children k through eight walked there daily from their family farm and the school was the pride of those communities records show that one teacher taught all the grades and we know some schools had as many as 45 students former superintendent leo johnson and the board of education in 1955 recommended the closing of these schools and that's a whole political issue i was in second grade at that time in the fall of 1955 we went on the big yellow school buses and came to town to the recently built jensen school and union school but on june 19th 2002

01920 years this coming june we raised 175 000 in grants donation fundraising and in-kind to move then relocate weber bliss through the one acre lot over here on woodland working with superintendent ellen ewing and the board of education at that time they provided us with the lot scott graydon he was not superintendent yet and myself co-chaired that group my husband jim doug bacon robert cook wayne clemons taylor and barry jacobson phyllis martin and paul tebow also assisted at our dedication on september 26 2004 we donated weber bliss back to the schools lean area schools and created a 501c3 saline area schools historic preservation foundation word of advice if you ever create a 501c3 keep it short to operate the school this is a volunteer group of individuals with an interest in one-room schools who have

020educated themselves on the learning that occurred between the walls of these buildings in reference weber bliss is now a living history museum to reenact a day in the life of a student dressing as they did in those days eating a typical lunch learning the lessons and playing the games simultaneously we worked with the teachers of saline area schools to prepare a curriculum it fit best into the third and fourth grade and met michigan social studies standards second grade was added later and so to date annually celine's second through fourth graders visit to understand the education in those days consolidation in life in the late 1800s and early 1900s but during when field trips were not permitted we brainstormed our activities we had always wanted to record the history as we know it both of weber

021bliss saline area schools consolidation and one-room schools we have school masters and docents who have attended national and state conventions read on the subject and prepared themselves to convey this information the full video is 26 minutes we're only showing you ten this evening k todd was instrumental in organizing the content ben goodman and anna brett nella assisted us and our own school masters and docents did the content and so here is the 10 minute video okay absolutely well they're getting it set up can i ask a question what did they eat for lunch back in the were from family 1800s so the items were from there and um meat was probably left over from last night's dinner fruit from trees in the orchard and vegetables from the garden and my father who attended the same

022one-room school that i did on a bethel church in auburn road it was the redshirt school and that was saline school district mentions the fact that he um an orange or banana was what he got in his christmas stocking that was not your typical daily lunch i got that and how far would they with the most of the kids have had to walk to get to school like us three miles each way through the snow it was up uphill both ways and um yes very typically um that was the that was somewhat the barometer of where the schools were located approximately two miles apart and the kids would all have walked they wouldn't have had their parents drop them off off the horse correct a horse was maybe common a bicycle maybe but not with

023rubber tires and you would you would find that walking but walking we we tell the students walking was like a bus because if you lived here you walk to the next house and you pick those children up and then you walk to the next house and you pick those children up so walking to school was a social event for you and that was part of the the fun of going to one room school that's great i bet we i bet other people up here have questions too because now you do i can ask questions this is cool tell me about a typical like school day like it started when it stopped all that it started at nine usually remember we're on a family farm so the chores were important in the morning and then the

024children would arrive lessons would begin a teacher one teacher to all those students so sheriff's schedule was to do maybe first grade reading and then while the others were doing the other activities was very independent now i was the only child in my grade when i went to wrestler and so i that's where i learned my independence to do things and to monitor how i direct myself and study etc and those your schedule then was two recesses in them during the day 15 minutes lunch in recess at noon you could finished at four o'clock but at four o'clock then we didn't have custodians so you therefore went to some children cleaned the chalkboard cleaned the outhouse everything yeah today days we call that differentiation right okay we're ready for the video [Music] so [Music] [Applause]

025[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to the weber bliss one room schoolhouse [Music] it was built in 1869 on the corners of ginsley and ellsworth roads in lodi township about six miles northwest of its present location at this time in our history ninety percent of the people earned their living in some phase of agriculture here at the school farm children learned the three r's reading writing and arithmetic and other essential information that they would need to be successful farmers or the wives of farmers the school day began at 9 00 a.m and ended at 4 p.m with an hour for lunch so students who lived nearby could go home and eat and two 15-minute recesses one in the morning and one in the afternoon before walking home at the end of the school day janitorial

026work was assigned to the older students this might include sweeping the floors emptying the water pail or cleaning slave boards usually no homework was assigned because children had to help with farm chores in the evening at this early time in our history the mode of transportation was either walking or using a horse roads had no names and landmarks were used in giving directions such as a large tree possibly or a building such as a church or school [Music] [Applause] let's look around the schoolyard at some interesting artifacts notice the bell in the bell tower on the school roof it's operated with a rope that goes into the main classroom it was the only source of communication that the one room school teacher had she would use the bell to welcome students in the morning at

027nine o'clock and in case there was an emergency she would ring the bell and farm families who lived the nearest to the school would come and see what the problem was now let's take a look at the flag patriotism and love of country were stressed by farm families notice the annex in front of the school it was added in the 1920s when electricity came to the building now look at the whiteboard fence it is a replica of the original fence notice the pump it's over the well and that was the source of water that was used inside the school the outhouse or outdoor restroom some schools had two outhouses but this school just had one [Music] weber plus one room school house has a clock room when you enter the front door weber bless one

028room schoolhouse has a recitation bench this is a long wooden bench that's located in the front of the classroom next to the teacher's desk our classroom library at weber glass consisted of one wooden bookshelf and the doors on it are made of glass we have two large slate boards at weber plus one room schoolhouse the first slight board is hanging above the teacher's desk the second bigger slate board is along the side wall because paper was hard to get during the days of the one room schoolhouse children used these small slate boards which are like chalkboards to write with they had to write with this little tool called a slate pencil slate boards and slate pencils were made of rocks this will give us a good view of the various desks in the room as

029you can see we have small s in the front and the larger desks are in the back of the room you notice the holes in some of the desks that's called an inkwell as the children got older and were able to use the ink and the pen they were introduced to writing on paper this is called a pot belly stove it was the only means of keeping it warm in the one-room schoolhouse there was of course no electricity in the one room schoolhouse so they had to rely on the light from the windows to do their work some schools eventually were equipped with possibly a kerosene lamp [Music] welcome and good day students we are going to learn what a typical day in a one-room schoolhouse is like so get in your listing positions with

030your feet flat on the floor shoulders straight and your hands folded in front of you on your desk school's in the ringing of the big school belt outside means that school is about to start for the day opening exercises are the reciting of the pledge of allegiance in unison and roll call when roll call is taken please stand up say here ma'am and sit down you will always stand when speaking to me to show respect the first lessons of the day will be reading spelling writing and memorization when your group is called you will come to the reading bench and we will read aloud in the mcguffey readers when you are not at group you will be sitting at your desk doing your other lessons the ringing of this bell means to change reading groups

031to quiet down or to come to lunch and recess lunch and recess are a time for you to socialize and exercise outdoor games include hoops graces walking down the stilts playing tag playing eeny i need over and more inside games include shuffleboard beanbag toss hiding the thimble passing the ring or more after lunch in recess is arithmetic paper is expensive so you will be working on slates using a slate pencil that can be erased you are to memorize all your addition subtraction multiplication and division facts and learn how to cipher this means you will know how to carry over and borrow when doing more complex arithmetic problems story problems can be done either in your head or using the slate the rest of the afternoon's lessons will be grammar science geography history public speaking and

032elocution [Music] today i'm going to talk and give you information about discipline used by school masters in the one room school in the late 1800s there were a variety of approaches to discipline and a school master would decide what was appropriate to use in various situations there were two forms of punishment or discipline used in the one room school one was called embarrassing punishment and the other was called physical or corporal punishment [Applause] at the beginning and all the way through i hope you saw a lot of the artifacts that we have at the school and we just received an 1893 record book i was looking through it my cousin's grandfather is in this i think this must have come from the bridgewater area so we do have a lot of the materials from that

033time period that connect us with our past and history next i'd like to introduce all of you already know anna she's my co-chair of this committee and our two students and so chloe would you first like to come up this is chloe tandy and i think she introduces herself and you have your mcguffey reader that she's going to refer to hi my name is chloe tandy and i'm a second grade student in mrs marshall's class at woodland miles my favorite part about weber bless was playing hopscotch outside of the school i also loved eating my snack on the quilts outside the school has books that students used in the early 1900s called the primers i am now going to read you a few lines please turn to page 13 to read with me reading together

034is how they used to do it a log the frog see the frog on a log rap sees the frog can the sock see lap the frog can see the dog rap ran at the frog recitation and group recitation like you just did were very very common and then the next step would be for you to read individually when the teacher felt as if you were ready and the next step was to start memorizing because books were at a minimum and so as a result the books that you have the primer by mcguffey were one of the only books that were used for reading and there is a great history about mcguffey he was actually a presbyterian preacher the eclectic part of that title comes from the fact that he gathered those readings from poems

035and stories and all types of things and even the bible so with that that that book is one of six and when you get to the sixth one it's definitely high school reading next charlie brittnell hello my name is charlie brittnell and i'm a fourth grade student in miss thorne's class at heritage my favorite part about weber bless was learning how to use the stilts at recess i had to work with my friends to figure out how to use them there's also a game called graces which is played with two people two rods and one wooden hoop who would like to try to play catch with me maybe the two of you can play afterwards okay [Applause] did he get it with two yeah okay two to two okay step back each of you yeah

036two to two or did you get four mr doctor yeah he caught it four to two okay then you can keep score anna five step back 6'5 [Applause] thank you dr lance and charlie i think one of the conclusions after the games is all the games are made from wood um the buildings made from wood the prevalence of the materials that we had in those days we do a lot of then and now the comparison of the one room school to the present school that they're attending whether it be pleasant ridge or harvest or heritage or woodland meadows and so the learnings from the artifacts are tremendous accomplishment for the children and as my husband says if there's one thing that you can learn from coming here today when you walk through that door it's

037that life was very different in the late 1800s and 1900s and i'll never forget the little boy who walked up to him one day and said are you making all of this up and um i think sometimes history does present itself that way i would like to introduce some of the committee who's here this evening and let you know about their work the saline area school historic preservation will you guys raise your hands they're involved they're educated about one-room schools they work hard for the funds in order to maintain the building and keep it operating for the three sets of classes that come and i totally appreciate their time and effort will the dozens and school masters please raise your hand starting april 29th for the entire month of may they will be at weber

038bliss dealing with the classes that will be upcoming and the saline teachers who visit thank you for your time and effort and finally for the few of us that attended a one-room school all three of us are saline school district in attendees and like i said that's where a lot of the history that we have come from if you see classes in attendance we invite you to stop and visit we'll tell the students that you're the county supervisor they tended to visit once uh a year to assess the teacher but be sure you leave your your horse tied to the board fence out front you are excused any questions that's fantastic i think a lot of us all of us would love to stop by we will not assess any teachers [Laughter] so glad to

039see this preserved it's it's it's so nice to have students back in that room again one room schoolhouse again after covet any questions or comments for cheryl or her group yeah jenny i think on the board at least i have the unique um history of having taught there not when cheryl was a student but when when i was a teacher here i visited with my second grade class and also had the honor of working with cheryl to develop the second grade curriculum with mary ledford and aaron dio perez and and in fact this lesson that chloe read today i think i haven't memorized from the times that i was there um but sometimes we talk about then and now and we compare um things that that are different and there are a lot of things

040that are different but one thing that always struck me was the recitation bench and and how we still know and how research still supports small group instruction for reading and and how we knew that at the very beginning um i learned to play shuffleboard on that wood floor i learned to ring the bell gently because you can't pull a cord too hard i was mesmerized by the maps and the artifacts and even made a couple trips to that scary basement and and was also really really thankful that there is a working toilet inside the building now um so i i just want to appreciate the work that you've done and um as a teacher watching students experience that as a parent hearing my own children experience that just the impact that it had on them

041we in second grade actually took some liberties we created a historical fiction because our uh curriculum was tied to local history and so there wasn't a whole lot for us to um to to to draw from so we had to rely on cheryl and and the celine historic um society and we created letters from actual people who grew up in celine um but the letters were uh were things that we created from the historic events at the time and i think parents still if they have second graders they hear as they're driving through town like oh that house came in on the train and oh that house you know has uh furniture from the world's fair so um so we we learned a lot and being a transplant to celine i learned a lot and

042appreciate so much about our community in the history so thank you for your work thank you for um for honoring me and and allowing me to learn about our community and students for generations well thank you and and it's people like us that have come forth to help us develop go ahead brad okay but i will i will say something real quick um so i feel like i should stand up so i want to show you that respect and say ma'am yes so i just want to tell you as a parent of two kids who have participated in these field trips and invite part of these these processes that like it's important for us to pay attention to our history and it's important for us to pay homage to it and to and to recognize

043from where we came and where you know and how good we have it in a lot of ways and and all that but i just want you to hear from me as a as a parent how much i appreciate the time the effort all the things that go into doing this and providing this opportunity for our students so thank you and the people behind me deserve that too because they put in hours in doing that well as a student who has been there in second grade uh i remember being in kindergarten and having my older brother and sister get to go there and i was just like i have to go and sit in a classroom while they get to go and play outside it you know it was cool driving driving by it every

044day was pretty cool and then my brother and sister got to go so then i waited my three years now i got to go and it was pretty sweet i i don't remember too much from second grade with dio perez but i do remember field day of course and the trip to the trip to weber bliss and it was sweet i remember it now i remember playing outside with like that exact same stuff so you know when kids come by it's it's something that doesn't really just go right over the head because it's it's a lot cooler than um the day-to-day life of a second grader so it's interesting i remember it i still enjoy it and you know maybe maybe someday i'll be giving a presentation about what spike ball taught me at recess

045or something or something like that i don't know so thank you very much i still remember my time there i'm sure i don't know if i don't know if you guys were there but you know all students graduating if you come to graduation and you ask about weber bluffs i'm sure plenty remember their trip there thank you mary we did my father with my brother so i was gonna say this before you did um but my grandma um grew up on a mountain in west virginia um so i'm not trying to like you know one-up you but but um she she attended um a small school house um on the mountain and you know up and down the hills uh or mountains um so she got a fifth grade education and so i'm curious about

046you said eighth grade was there a different another school that the students would attend beyond the eighth grade yes one of the things that you know we found is that they vary tremendously from school to school and attending the national convention one of the things that i i learned the christmas program how i'm saying christmas because in the one room school it was and we tried to explain that differently but in wisconsin and minnesota the halloween program was a big thing because it was too dark by the time december 25th came for them to have such things so we've tried to compromise what we're attempting to teach and history is history there's no doubt like we were just brad was just saying but in the same respect we attempt to bring to light the the

047various things that existed and continue to exist because they are history and talk about them and are very sensitive to the fact that that's important pardon did students attend union school after or before union what what happened after eighth grade after eighth grade i'm going to let my husband talk because he's that he's that tell him about your graduation from eighth grade well i graduated you took a test which allowed me to attend any one rooms any high school in the state of michigan but all of us since we were part of the saline community went to sling and it was at historic union school it's now historic and uh the second floor was for grades seven through 12. in my graduating class in 1954 we have clara bliss diploma from graduating from a one-room

048school and i'm sure you're aware that our high school diplomas today are maybe eight by five or six by five her diploma graduating from a one-room school is about that big and so we conclude and show to the students the importance of graduating at that time and my father who would be near 100 at this point betsy's father also attended a one-room school my father only went through eighth grade he never took the test and went on to come into town and um i hesitate to mention this but it it does exist we we spoke to the historic society in saline on sunday and when we came in third grade then to jensen you know brand new school beautiful school at that time we were the country kids and we remained the title all the

049way through and someone else was standing there who's younger than i am and he said you know that's very true i forget about that there were the town kids and we were the country kids because we came from the one room schools at that particular time um i'd like to add about the teacher clara bliss was a student at the school and graduated and guess what four years later she came back as the teacher can you imagine being that young and having known these children all their life and then came back as the teacher responsible for their learning well we invite you to stop any more questions i just had a little question i'm really hoping that we get back to our tradition of the ice cream social in august and maybe threatening these board

050members or i mean enticing these board members to spelling bees or other games at the ice cream social like we used to do um anna is is pushing for having that and being a co-chair of the committee i i foresee that it will be on the agenda that's what i will say yes yes so start practicing oh okay we're ready all of the all of the games of that time thank you stop by thank you everyone appreciate you everyone thank you and thank you excellent charlie the stilts are my favorite too oh yeah we should chloe did you want to get these back charlie i wanted to tell you the stilts were my favorite thing the first time i visited too and with chaperone thanks paulie thank you all right we might have to have

051her stay up here can we have her tonight do you get enough pictures all right excellent um thank you so much moving on is our second scheduled report teaching and learning presentation diversity equity and inclusion and culturally responsive instruction we'd like to invite shannon washington to the podium oh don't forget the bell oh yeah all right do you have this slideshow where's oh yeah thank you no okay um i see a couple board members have it um okay or i can put it up on the screen yes yep okay no problem i can get started i my son can play the drums my dad but uh i could dance okay well i'll get started um i am here tonight to share with you an update on my consulting plan which i introduced in the fall

052and i'm going to start by reminding you what the plan was and then i'll show you where we are in the plan um and then i'll share with you some updates on things that um we've done and some okay yeah whenever you're ready you can just pop it up there um some things that we've done uh little samples of things that we've done i'll share with you some data and then um some recommendations and let you know where we are i'm kind of gonna bring this plan to a close you can go to the next slide so this is what i brought in the fall i shared a one-year plan that was in three phases and i talked about how the purpose of the plan was to first come up with a definition of what

053culturally responsive instruction will be in selene and then to establish a timeline for the district to move toward that this plan was also going to serve as a kind of a long-term train well as a tool to have a long-term transition into having an instructional position that would specialize in culturally responsive instruction as part of the teaching and learning team and so i divided it into three phases and we are here like that little arrow is where where well that's where we were when we were um when i was making this slide show and i'll talk a little bit about what i'm working on now in phase three at the end but that is about where we are so next slide please at the beginning of the year my first encounter with teachers i've had

054all of the teachers in a professional development session and whenever you have all of the people in one place you collect data and so that's what i did and so i gave teachers a survey and i'll share with you just a few of those data points but if you are interested in seeing the entire presentation of that that is hyperlinked in the top of this slide and what you would be linking to is my analysis of the data if you really want the raw data because you just like really dig raw data then i'll send that to you okay actually you have a there is a board member who really digs raw data i know that so so uh if that's your jam i am happy to send you the raw data and i will

055be honest um there is a lot that i could continue to do with the raw data but i tried to um take kind of this first survey as a way to to kind of guide the work through the year and to leave the building level instructional leaders with something concrete to work with so if you're interested in that whole report that's hyperlinked there but i'll give you a few um like a peek into what i found so the first thing i found is that about half of all of the teachers expressed having participated in some kind of training related to culturally responsive instruction up to this point um and then a little under ten percent about eight percent we're not sure um and so and that happens right as educators sometimes we go to a

056thing and we're not really necessarily taking that particular training and implementing it right away so we're not quite confident there and then others were pretty clear no we have not had any specific training there so that really helped me to kind of gauge like where the staff was and the conclusion i could draw from that was that more more updated or refreshed training is needed next slide please so another question i asked the teachers was about how much they knew about their students cultures and cultural identities one of the hallmarks or core tenets of culturally responsive instruction is that teachers are aware of who they are teaching and they have a basic understanding of the cultural identities of the kids in the seat and what i found was only about half the teachers agreed that

057they knew who their students were culturally and then the other half of the teachers either disagreed or strongly disagreed that they knew their students cultural identities and so this helped me to look at what the teachers needed and so i was able to follow up and find out that you know teachers needed time actually teachers needed tools and time to learn about who their students were beyond just their their names and their favorite movies there was some work to do there and then another thing that i learned from the survey was um and there were several things that teachers indicated as needs but the two biggest needs next slide please um the two biggest needs um were here and i i made them you know bigger on this slide that i did share with all

058of the building administrators 61 to 66 percent of teachers indicated that they needed realistic models of what culturally responsive instruction is so that they could implement it and they needed time and space to collaborate with their colleagues it was a very specific expression of need and the all of the research and all of the instruction around culturally responsive instruction indicates that the most beneficial professional development for teachers is collaboration working with each other um and having difficult conversations or having dialogue about these um about culturally responsive instruction proved to be the most beneficial more beneficial than bringing in experts and lectures and you know videos about it next slide please so um i was able to meet with um the entire administration and share um some of the highlights and low lights of the data

059and when i presented to the admin i divided it by elementary and secondary because there were some some differences between elementary and secondary and then at the end of that i tried to make three recommendations and i tied the recommendations to celine school board philosophy and that is something i really want to start normalizing in terms in this work because i found in the very beginning if you remembered i set out to look at what was already written in celine's founding or i should say foundational documents looking at the compass looking at the school board policies looking at the school improvement plans looking at the handbooks looking at curricula and looking at how culturally responsive instruction has been and is already happening or is supported by the foundational documents and so i every recommendation that

060i pulled i connected it to what i see as a really powerful school board philosophy so i'll share those recommendations with you so my first recommendation is that the leadership invests in professional development time for teachers to collaborate with their colleagues so that those teachers can build realistic models of curriculum implementation but that can also happen by with teacher leaders and instructional leaders and i tied that to two guiding principles from the school board philosophy the first one was a commitment to continuous improvement in all that we do organizationally and individually so this school board believes in continuous improvement and professional development but there's also this idea that this needs to be an institution of ongoing training that so you have these ongoing training programs for all employees based on the ever-changing needs of students

061in society and so if we're rooted in those two philosophies we want to make sure that teachers well and not just classroom teachers because i've done some work with literacy tutors and with our ell staff and we want to make sure that there is ongoing training for them as well the second recommendation was that it was important for leadership to articulate their support and the support of the entire educational system for teachers doing this work and the risk it entails one of the things that i have found out in interviews and in focus groups is that there are teachers who express feeling like this is risky and that's something that's you know heavily documented four decades in the literature um going back to when this was called multicultural education all the way till now that

062it it is a risk for teachers to do something differently to do something that embraces things that can be considered contentious even if they're not contentious and so one of the school board philosophies this happens to be a personal favorite of mine as i like to hang out on board docs docks is that i like the way that this is written the development of an organizational environment which nurtures trust and respect and eliminates the fear which stifles innovation and risk-taking now whoever wrote that i don't know if they meant it but i'm going to keep reminding this organization that that is in writing eliminates the fear which stifles innovation and risk taking and so with that it's important that leaders stand on that and articulate their support for teachers who feel like they are taking

063a risk and then the third recommendation was to provide time space and ways for teachers to explore their students identities resulting in knowledge that can be used to create more meaningful curriculum for students and i connected that to this philosophy that the educational process can be enhanced by recognizing multiple intelligences and by providing alternative instructional models to address students differences varied learning styles and talents someone asked me recently about um teachers who were not culturally responsive did i consider them still good teachers are they failing are they failures and one of the things that i said particularly about saline schools is that no we already know that celine teachers are good teachers and that if a child is put in a teacher's classroom and they are being taught to read and they're given a book

064about frogs every week like they're going to learn how to read they're going to learn how to read and they're probably going to be pretty good readers but that experience will lack the richness the depth the variety and will probably also at some point lack inspiration for that child and we will not be creating necessarily what we want to create which is a lifelong learner global citizen and someone who can contribute to society beyond frogs and so that is that's why it's important that we pay attention to students different needs and their very learning styles so another thing that i did and most of you attended these and so i can kind of go over this pretty quickly but i did invite parents in to learn about culturally responsive instruction and to ask me questions

065about it and to see how culturally responsive instruction fits into some of the other things that celine has been doing for a while like the english language learner program like student affinity groups like social emotional learning and the multi-tiered system of support and so this three-part series um was an effort to really partner with parents in learning about this so on in one column i have teachers learning about it on another column i have parents learning about it and then i am working to advise administrators on how to support those um efforts and so i just screenshot a couple of the slides that had questions that parents submitted and i believe that depending on what session you were in i may have gotten to all of the questions if you were in the first session

066i definitely didn't but i did publish these slides and distribute them so that parents could see the the answers to their questions um and so i pulled a few questions that kind of stand out and that really informed my work um after that like really looking at some of these questions oh you can go to the next slide sorry um some of these questions were really good in that they drew out kind of fleshed out some things that i may not have been actively looking at before this so one question was per the article distributed during the cra cri presentation please provide selene schools data supporting a disparity in performance on standardized assessments amongst races so if you remember in the first series i passed out an article that was written by an educator who

067used her own experience to express why culturally responsive instruction is important in education and so this parent wanted some local data to prove that it was necessary and so i reached out to colleagues in the district to help me locate some nwea scores and these scores went back from 2016 to 2020 and um i think i got math and reading scores and so i sat there with a uh you know with a stack of these scores and put them into a digestible color-coded graph here to show that there are disparities in performance um by race and these disparities tell a lot of stories and the nwa itself tells a story over time but um these this this is exactly something that i was not looking to work on particularly i was not looking to work

068on disproportionality um this year that was not a part of the plan but this parent asked this question and the answer gave us um put us really right in line with what we know to be true statewide and nationally learning is cultural and learning over time remains cultural and so what i could conclude here is that um there is a disparity between white students and their asian classmates there is a disparity between black and brown students and their white classmates and these disparities are happening with kids sitting in the same classrooms with the same teachers and we also can see that maybe there is a pattern where all students are not doing as well by the time they get to spring but it looks as if students of color black and brown students in particular

069are doing significantly worse by the time they go through a whole school year like there is so much here that you know is not necessarily part of the the plan right now but i found it really useful to be able to share this with parents partly because i'm not making this up i'm not like sitting at home making up theories about education in america this is fl and i pick these two randomly so i picked um seventh grade um math and seventh grade reading here randomly just to see and this is what and i found that every grade level i went to and every um subject area the same pattern existed you can go to the next slide another parent asked a really good question why are black students performing lower than white students how

070much of that gap comes from cultural mismatch and how much from other factors can you research this and maybe make a pie chart of what you find so i did not make a pie chart i found a pie chart that was a hypothesis submitted by a university professor that there are a number of reasons why black children appear to be underperforming their white classmates in america's public schools and what this professor shared was that and it's important for teachers to know those other reasons and that sits at the core of what culturally responsive instruction is and so but the overwhelming majority of the literature on this topic tells us a couple of things one i pulled um naep scores from 2019 i tried to find scores from the before times because i didn't want to

071account for covit and you can go to the naep which is the nation's report card test so i did not look specifically for whether or not celine students took this test but this is just a general snapshot and i looked at the state of michigan and nationally and i chose white black and hispanic as groups to compare to each other because often times what we hear is that um you know poor kids are going to do worse than rich kids and maybe that's why maybe has nothing to do with the teaching maybe it has to do with socioeconomic status but when you take income or socioeconomic status out of it or you compare poor white kids to poor black kids you still see the same disparities same thing if you take rich white kids and

072rich black kids and compare them you still see disparities and so income is a factor but it is not the factor and so my answer to this question was yes there are reasons there are real reasons and some of them all revolve around bias and racism uh unequal access lack of representation and it must be a problem because look at how many books you can go read about the education or the achievement gap in this country and so i shared seven books that you know i think this parent might be interested in because there are lots of reasons lots of theories lots of evidence that this is real and then one final question i think i got the most feedback about this question after the parent education series and this question really helped to kind

073of illuminate the a mindset that exists not only in our community but in our state and in the nation and it is a historically present mindset and so i'll i'll read the question and i'll talk about how this question has informed the work moving forward so the question says if students can only only learn well when the lessons and points are taught in their culture then whose culture wins which students will be allowed to learn best which lesson will lesson cycle through different cultures in each class it sounds like that's the plan then each child black brown asian white genders identities religions etc will only learn his or her own points well they will miss the lesson points that are not about them if that's true should lessons be broken out by intersexual categories and

074each student only be taught in his or her cultural language how is that practical and this is this is like a really good question because it provides a lot of teachable points a lot of teachable moments there and as as an educator sometimes when when you have students who ask you a difficult question you have to step back and you you want to find the best answer so i did take a lot of time to look at like how can i best address um there's so much here and so the idea of one culture winning um really resonated with me and it made me think about native american education and how that is a wonderful example of what happens when one culture wins and so i sought out a native american educational scholar award-winning teacher

075and i found a video clip of her talking about um kind of talking about this topic and shared it with parents made it available to parents oh sorry go to the next slide i forget that y'all don't see my screen here okay so um so the what i wanted to um first address is sometimes you have to address what's at the root of this question and so i did that first one culture winning is the opposite of inclusion it is ethnocentric oppressive and harmful winning is not and never should or should never be the focus or goal um and what this woman speaks about in this little video clip here she talks about how um and some of you are aware of this maybe some of you are not but the native american boarding schools

076were about one culture winning they were developed with the intention of educating native american children but the theme particularly of the carlisle indian school which is in pennsylvania the theme was to kill the indian and save the child and it was the idea of taking away the native american culture to replace it with a culture that's a culture winning and this woman in the video talks about how native american education is reclaiming their culture in education allowing students to learn in traditional languages and through traditional customs and incorporating all kinds of responsiveness to that and so at the end of this question i i really wanted to make it clear that student learning as an outcome is what is practical and student-centered learning is not centered on what is practical for teachers if you find

077a teacher doing what's practical for them there's no joy in that classroom because eventually you will lose engagement with your students you will lose creativity there will be a loss of innovation i also talked about how culturally responsive instruction is is really not about focusing on one culture or what is deemed to be the main points but focusing on the many ways of proving your learning and um when we focus on one main way of knowing that is almost kind of like a collective agreement that there is one way of knowing and we all know as educators that that's not true all right um something else i've shared with both parents and with teachers is our why anyone who has done any work in leadership you know that if people know why they're doing next

078slide please if people know why they're doing what they're doing and if that why resonates with them they're more likely to be motivated to do it and so it has been my intention to constantly remind everyone why we're doing this and so i won't read through this but on one side of this slide is a statement from the k-12 insight focus group conducted in 2019 where students are asking students are asking to be taught about what they are calling more controversial issues and to learn about different cultures and to focus and promote global citizenship and multicultural sensitivity on the other side i pulled some data from the 2020 census projections and pointed out that our students are going to come of age become adults become voters and become possibly become parents and employees in what

079will be the most diverse united states of america ever right now more than half of all students in public schools are not white right now like as of 2020. but by 2060 a third of children in public schools will identify or a third of children period will identify as a white not spent hispanic but two-thirds will not um and because in 2030 um the baby boom generation will be 65 and you know maybe enjoying life on the beach somewhere um there will be a lower natural birth rate and so immigration will drive our population growth and so it is critical that we prepare our kids to live in that more diverse america next slide okay so one of the goals was to have teachers develop a definition of culturally responsive instruction to have to kind

080of give them a foundation a very like skeletal framework and then let celine teachers define it because they are experts on saline students and how celine teaches and so this definition was originally supposed to be premiered if you will on that snow day we had in february that was an early release day but it didn't happen and so not the whole the whole staff has not seen this yet i shared it with the middle school staff um with um some literacy tutors at a literacy tutor meeting and then i'm scheduled to share this with elementary and high school at separate meetings um however they have seen a version of this this is what i would call the final draft but i hesitate to call it final it really needs to be a living draft because

081as our society changes and it will change more rapidly than it's maybe changed in the past we need to be willing to edit this as we learn more about instruction we need to be able to edit this so um but i am asking teachers to live with this definition and um i am not going to read this to you i am going to pause and give you a chance to read it because why not so this went through several iterations throughout the year and um once we got to so i asked every teacher to give me their thoughts so i started with a lot of thoughts and then i kind of reduced that down to asking members of the teaching and learning team who i consider kind of experts in teaching and learning in this

082district beyond my experience here and i wanted them to make sure this kind of jived with other things that are in print and other initiatives that are in place and then i use the literacy tutors kind of as a focus group to run a few things by them to see how they um how this worked with them and i made like another adjustment and then this is where we are now and so the idea here is that i'm gonna i'm asking teachers to you know print this out put it somewhere where you can see it and start to um look at it if it makes you feel inspired great if it makes you feel uncomfortable also great because this is the direction that we are all going to go in and next slide which is

083the final slide um when i talk about making it inspiring you or making you uncomfortable i've kind of created this map of what it looks like for a teacher to go on this journey this is based on both the literature and my real life interactions with teachers who are on this journey and um it is based specifically on celine teachers and at the very beginning of the journey saline teachers be are you know it's documented so many teachers are great they're really good teachers i'm a parent i can vouch for that i'm a parent who's also a teacher i can vouch for that um and as teachers go on this journey so they start off as these instructional and content experts and they decide they want to transition toward being more culturally responsive but then

084what happens when i've talked to teachers here who are really interested in this they will tell you and they're very very honest about it which is which gives us so much good feedback they run into resistance either it's internal or external internal could be their personal belief system internal could be fear it could be fatigue but external could be lack of time and lack of information so comfort and competence come into play and so once teachers reach that resistance sometimes they end up kind of back where they started being instructional and content experts but really blind to what's needed by students who may be marginalized students who are different students who have cultural identities that often are not front and center of our instructional materials and so they go back into teaching with no cultural

085lens and that risk marginalizing students who are already marginalized and so the goal here is to kind of push and pull teachers through that resistance with support support from their leadership support from the community because i've gotten a lot of positive feedback from community members parents who who have i've never seen or talked to before reaching out supporting this work so that teachers become culturally responsive instructional and content experts so right now i am in the process of conducting a research project here working with teachers about retention and what is needed to continue to diversify our staff and retain those people who make our staff diverse and i'm in the middle of that so i really like to talk about research and progress because i don't know what it's going to look like at the

086end but i will be reporting that to to steve and kurt so we can continue those efforts so that's it for me any questions thank you shannon questions or comments for shannon yeah candace i just want to say thank you for all the work that you've done on this and um i know it's been a lot in a short amount of time and i know it's taken a lot of your time while you're in the midst of or we're in the midst of completing your doctorate which i just want to say congratulations publicly um and i i've noticed a difference in my son and what he's coming home and talking about the conversations that are happening in class so i i believe it is the fruit of what the work that you've been doing with

087teachers and i just really appreciate it thank you i do want to add i do want to add that nope i do want to add what kansas is saying thanking you for the work shannon you work part-time but you really don't you're working all the time on this and it's greatly appreciated in the district thank you my um brain is like an old dell computer that doesn't shut down so i don't stop until i'm finished and yeah so okay i yeah i have lots of thoughts but i'll keep them quick as best i can collaboration is such a big deal i will speak to my experience as an educator in the field and saying that i recognize that we do feel risk in in this work right and and so i think when we do

088when we foster collaborative environments we also create professional learning communities where people can have real authentic dialogue and one of the things that i love about what i'm hearing is that this is about teachers and empowering them to have hard conversations with one another so that we can grow and foster change together right because i would argue that like i love hearing you talk about everybody's kind of getting there and ready on different levels right but like as long as we continue to empower this work and it's important work then i think the outcome for our students as you're saying is so powerful and so i'm happy to hear us like say that like we're just committed to like this being sloppy and this being hard and this being something that we're not giving up

089on and so i i first of all i wanna i wanna thank you for that because that comes through huge i will tell you i also love that we're tying it into our compass we're tying it into the work we want to do and that we're always pushing ourselves to what are our next action steps right because then it is breathing and i love the definition and how that that can change and that can modify and it can grow with with our staff as we come along on on the journey and so for me as an educator i just see this and i i'm excited for the work that we have establishing and that we're doing and i i want you know how much i applaud you dr washington on this now um i wondered

090about you had a graph there where you showed the that that our students of different um cultural yeah like that right there right so have we tried i know coven might made this difficult i see seventh grade 2017-18 what about 18 19 what about and and i guess i would say that i would be interested in seeing a year-to-year how did we do right what changed what what focuses do we need to have and quite frankly where do we need to place those focuses so that we know that we're representing in our classrooms targeted instruction where we need to so to answer that i did not share this with teachers i know teachers this was set off all kinds of professional alarms panic fear shame guilt and in some indifference and this was brought out

091by the question of a parent and i went on a mission to meet the needs of the parent but i had to consider that we're still at the place where we're defining what culturally responsive instruction is and i am i'm an avid believer and we have to play the long game i can't start with something like this and throw truly passionate dedicated educators into trying to fix this before they have skills language and confidence and competence to really address these things and so um this was specifically at the request of a parent um and uh michelle skekowicz provided you know the stack of paper and i randomly chose years and numbers and i avoided the covet year and i would say a year or two of this work would probably begin here and find a

092way to use this to motivate teachers who may respond with panic and indifference to this you're we're talking um success for kids we're all bought into success for kids so let's talk about how we can mitigate this i also believe that assessments uh standardized assessments are changing and ever-evolving and so i would be completely interested in it i just didn't think this was the right place to start because dedicated educators would would want to respond immediately and without skills without language without competence and comfort um it it could add to the stress making the transition that is so fair right like and quite frankly like as we build that confidence right to take those risks we didn't have those built-in systems back in 17 so i i appreciate that and i recognize i just i

093would love to see us pay attention to it going forward to quote-unquote evaluate the work we're doing absolutely i think it's super important and i do i thank you so much thank you anyone else let me guess you want the raw data i do want the raw data that's not my main point of view um thank you so much um i just wanted to congratulate you for this uh incredible work that you're doing um you know i'm i'm just really impressed by the by everything that you're doing and i think that you know um we're incredibly fortunate to have um you here and doing this work and i think that um you know we have we have the beginnings of what could really be a model program that others could could be emulating um in

094the future so that's something we can we can really be proud of here um the question that i was going to ask was actually about retention but i won't i won't ask you that question because your research is ongoing but i look forward to hearing about that um in the future i will say that um i did a little bit of my own research before um kind of anticipating your your presentation and and one thing that i was impressed by um doing the research um is that there are there are a lot of published studies out there from other districts showing um the efficacy of this kind of program for um for improving uh not not only is this the right thing to do because it's the right thing to do but this does actually

095uh there is research out there that that shows that these kind of approaches do improve test scores particularly for those marginalized groups that we really need to elevate and the data shows that we need to elevate but actually for everybody in the classroom um culturally responsive instruction actually improves uh results for for everybody regardless of what group they're in and um just you know with putting my research hat on for a moment um i think it would be great to think about whether you know going forward we can look at you know looking at how our test scores change and uh you know hopefully really improve and narrow that gap over over time so that we can we can show just how effective this this program is likely to be in the future so again

096thank you so much for this incredible work that you're doing thank you anybody else thank you so much i know you've been doing an incredible work i agree with steve you don't seem part-time you probably aren't technically you deserve a raise so on your slide about the teacher survey so if only half of the teachers are knowledgeable of all their students cultures and identities my question is how will their students learn about their own cultures and identities and their peers yeah i think um that's what we're working on um you can keep going back it's the donut um that one yes um so we're you're talking about um the half that hasn't participated in training that involves that self-identity work right no oh oh i know the one that says knowing okay keep going sorry

097this one yes um so one of the things that i i recognize this as a need and it's kind of leveled onto the time and space part um in fact tomorrow i am offering a compass connection session for teachers about like just how to explore culture because um particularly if you're not in humanities if you've not taken anthropology um and if you do kind of live and breathe in a very homogeneous world the idea of exploring culture takes a skill set and it takes a certain knowledge of self before you can do that and so i do want to empower teachers to figure out how to do that when you you have a full-time job i'm not asking you to go and get an anthropology degree on studying culture but i do want to point

098you in the direction of how you can start to kind of broaden your knowledge of different cultures in general and then empower you to have the skills and tools to learn about who your students are because your students are individuals first but they belong to a larger community and you need to have some basic knowledge about that community i think um a really good example of this is uh once upon a time in a couple of years ago there was a meeting that happened on a sunday evening and it was a meeting that was here in this room and it was predominantly african-american parents and it was a sunday evening and no one was really you know talking about what sunday evening means in african-american culture but somebody just kind of like blurted out well

099we're all missing sunday dinner and everyone started laughing because everybody knows sunday dinner is like it's it's really really a big deal in our culture it is where we gather around the table and we have our soul food and we kind of like enjoy that well that's a cultural thing and the fact that the meeting was on a sunday night you know everybody everybody different households different you know different neighborhoods but everybody kind of laughed because we all understood what that meant well how do you learn about those little nuances like maybe not have a meeting on a sunday night like how do you how do you learn that that's what i want to empower teachers to be able to explore without putting the burden on that community to educate that teacher but also empowering

100that teacher to know their students as first as individuals and then as members of a larger community and there are some really time practical because we we know that time is a problem some real time practical things that teachers can do over time to kind of build that capacity but yes this is probably this is this is a problem because a if you don't know who you are culturally it is difficult for you to explore and appreciate the cultures of others you're also more likely to appropriate other cultures if you're not aware of your own and so it is really important that we empower everyone to recognize we all have cultural identities and we need to value them um and not use them to take away from others cultural identities but feel empowered proud and

101be able to recognize the value in others so thank you so much anybody else actually i have one more thing so you made me think so i almost see this like pre-post testing if you will so do we have some intention that's what i'm thinking about to ask these questions again at the end of our our work here or not even at the end of our work continuously as we go along so um ideally that is what i would like to do i may not ask the the question about training in that because i now know that i have set with every teacher so i don't need to like take the pulse on that i know that whether you're recognizing or not you've had some but i will yes i would like to pull some

102of those questions and kind of take the pulse on where teachers are feeling in terms of comfort so any of the questions that fit under that that comfort that competency piece um i would i am doing a informal poll of teachers where and i don't think i have that slide in this show where i'm creating a like a self-inventory it's four things where i'm asking teachers to check yes or i need help and one of those four things is i am knowledgeable about my students all of my students cultures they are either going to say yes or i need help um and so i am kind of informally collecting that and i need help is what then i go to you know my colleagues like steve and say look they're asking for help let's build

103this for them and so um yes hi uh i just i want to thank you for your work and i and i um just the work that you're moving forward and and also acknowledge the work that um that several members of our our community and our staff have done and and that you've been able to move forward i i see mr lantman in the back and i know that the other mr lampman i know has done a lot of this work too and i've had the the um privilege of being in that classroom um and i don't want to i know i just mentioned a name but i don't want to mention names because they're i would forget someone but um i know that this work prior to you coming was was moving forward and

104then you coming has just ignited that and and has really accelerated that so i appreciate that and um also you're as as has been mentioned you are part-time but you're extremely generous with your time i know i've i've benefited from that as i know many other parents and community members and staff have so thank you for that this really resonated with me tonight because i had the opportunity today to to participate in a professional development around the work of gloria ladson billings so thinking about the dream keepers and those teachers um that she studied and and so if you're looking for research in this area that's that's one place to go but um the high expectations um developing cultural competence and raising and cultivating a socio-political consciousness and when all three of those things exist

105in a classroom all of our students thrive and in her work she found that especially our black and brown students were thriving and their peers were thriving so that that just really resonated with me tonight but one other thing that i heard um her mention and it goes along with one of the questions that you had from parents was that um that when we sent her a predominant culture in our classrooms we are not only being exclusive and and really we're not creating relevance for a number of our students in the learning and so that that question resonated with me that if students learn the best from from cultures and from backgrounds that are this theirs then do we need to you know segregate to to meet their needs and actually her work gloria lads

106and billing's work tells us no first of all it should be our goal to be cultivating multiculturalism and if not multiculturalism at the very least by culturalism and our students because when we center the predominant culture we're being exclusive but we are also um we are also creating as you said students who are not prepared for the world that they're going to be living in so just it just really really resonated um to me thinking about um thinking about the work ahead i'd love to talk to you more about this self inventory and just learning from that myself as an educator and human being and then the last thing that i wanted to say is that for me the lens that i've been thinking of recently is culturally affirming instruction instead of culturally responsive because

107i feel like we are doing a lot of responding to things and so i'm thinking about how we can be proactive and so changing that in my own mind to affirming instruction helps me to begin with that plan from the outset from the onset instead of responding to it of course we want to respond and know the students that are in front of us but thinking about it in a way that is proactive and affirming has just been really helpful so anyways i just learn from you every time so i appreciate it thank you so much thank you thank you i'll throw the slide with the self inventory in the slideshow once i sit down so you can see it i think it's just four it's just four items so yeah thank you oh okay

108okay and i i was very clear with me i have not read all of those books i've maybe um i've read actually two books that i didn't put on there but um the point i was trying to prove is that this is a heavily researched area this is not anecdotal um it is not limited to celine it's every public education system that deals with that disparity and it gets into some difficult topics about systemic bias and those are hard topics to talk about and i believe this district is here for that conversation shannon i've got questions for later that i want to deal with via email with you about this slide in particular and culturally sustainable pedagogy and things like that going way way forward and so i i kind of like to see some

109of the raw data that led to this slide at some point so i'll ask my questions via email okay thanks sounds good thank you anyone else no thank you dr washington oh my gosh don't make me start crying did you appreciate it did you defend it i did i missed that i literally just stopped crying on sunday it took me yes so i said i was not gonna cry work but yes i did and it was great thank you very nice well congratulations okay thank you congratulations again [Applause] um i'd like to please now entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the march 22 2022 closed session for the purpose of superintendent evaluation all right michael thank you support jenny thank you all those in favor please say aye um okay secretary jones if

110you can please do us the favor of passing out the minutes from the meeting and mr lantman and friends if you would if you're waiting to break the um break the drums down or anything if you want to do it we're gonna read before we vote so please feel free i don't want to keep anything from anyone from any activities or homework or anything it's really nice to have them here i know i i i a couple of rim shots i know we appreciate you waiting sorry about that they're very gracious okay so we'll take a minute to read and then give these back to secretary jones when we're done i just had a clarifying question on um uh and i don't think this is breaking closed session but i i i'd like us to

111review the the members that were present for this this meeting am i am i remembering this incorrectly but i didn't believe that we had central administration president besides dr lodge good catch yes so if we could um i would like to amend um amend the minutes to exclude central administration with the exception of dr ledge okay if everyone if anybody else has any other comments or uh we'll revise it yeah i'd like to accept these as amended thank you michael jenny would you like to second yes i'll support that okay perfect so candace can collect these and we'll go to vote now we'll go to vote thank you okay all those in favor of revised minutes um please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries now 7-0 um next i'd like to please entertain

112a motion to approve the washington county schools fiber consortium master service agreement as submitted by superintendent lodge motion gerby thank you brad michael thank you um dr latch would you like to say anything yeah i can be brief and jay is here jay's been working on a number of projects this is one of them in that this will just support the shared county costs for our network and ultimately we all work together to provide those services and and we want to approve it may i ask a question uh whoever knows the answer i noticed in the in that long document there was a reference to the sen the state education network does that mean that every district is on the same network throughout the states to your knowledge that we're all sharing or gathering data

113to that's a that's a j question i thought so i'm looking at i'm looking at you mr grossman if you know if you don't know don't come up so in answer to your question we're not all using the exact same network but all the networks that each county is using is part of this larger myosin network and that is one of the requirements for us to be part of that so sticking with the washington county's internet and use will keep us in compliance with that with the rest of the state so this is a consortium not just in washington but statewide awesome okay thank you great any other questions for jay or steve all right seeing none motion made gerbies second mcveigh all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven

114zero um i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the technology purchase package in the amount of four hundred and eighty six thousand eight hundred dollar eight hundred and seventy six dollars as submitted by jay grossman director of technology so move jones thank you candace support miller thank you jenny um jay would you like to say anything else about this one i hate to get you back up okay any questions for jay about anything that was in our packet this one i'll speak to this just briefly that this is part of the normal refurbishment renewal cycle and that's uh partly you know these these are funded through our bond cycles and and it's important that we keep up with relevant technology this particular one is primarily ipads okay excellent motion made joan ii miller

115all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries seven zero um i'd like to entertain a motion please to approve the changes to the catherine steiner burr scholarship as submitted by miranda owsley assistant superintendent of finance motion made michael thank you second support jenny thank you miranda would you like to say a few words i would in general we have this memorandum that was uh in your board packet but i also wanted to give some contextual history to this scholarship so the katherine steinerberg scholarship was established by catherine burr's husband howard burr in the her name at the time of her passing in 1986 both the steiner and burke families have been long-time supporters of saline schools catherine's father lloyd steiner provided a great contributions of in the form of land

116made available for the construction of two excellent schools in the 60s and the 70s catherine was a university of michigan graduate and a reading specialist for the slim schools for approximately 15 years mr burr's vision for this scholarship was to help slain students from disadvantaged backgrounds get a kickstart to their post-secondary education over the years the scholarship has been awarded with mr burr's vision in mind now mr burr and mrs burr's son thomas burr has been made arrangements that the scholarship will continue in perpetuity to assist two graduating saline high school students his desires the two students will receive a five thousand dollar scholarship each to assist them in their post-secondary education endeavors just as his parents had wished further every five years the scholarship has increased by 500. this will be one of the

117most generous scholarship awards that senior awards night how fortunate we are to have supporters like mr burr who are willing to continue the good that his parents started which in turn benefit our students great thank you miranda thank you mr burr and and family of course for the uh and catherine for the service for those 15 years especially any questions or comments for miranda okay seeing none we'll move to vote motion made mcvay second miller all those in favor please say aye aye opposed seeing none motion carries 7-0 next up discussion items uh treasurer gerby all righty uh finance met today 5 p.m items that we discussed in a quick recap first thing we discussed was the state of michigan school bond loan uh fund interest rate rate change uh we're realizing a floor change

118on that from a floor of 3 to a floor of 1.9 percent and so what that does is that helps us to realize um our school bond repayments and that assists us with that and so that is a welcome change for by the legislature and we're happy to see that uh the second thing we talked about was the bond we and we talked about uh the purchase tonight of ipads we uh we should be aware that this is pretty much the last major uh item that we're gonna be able to move from that bond so we have realized almost the entirety of the series three of our bonds and i guess what i would say is that i think this is an excellent example as dr lott said about the importance of being able to

119to maintain cutting edge and be able to to keep relevant and real technologies in our students hands and and so that refresh is something that i hate to say but we're just gonna have to do right and in these technologies i feel like as things get faster and things get better quicker it's almost like things become obsolete as soon as they're like purchased so the reality for us is if we want to stay when that on the on the cusp of of those things that you know the bond has helped us to do that tremendously so so thank you to our to the taxpayers thank you to our our base for for providing those things for our students uh the next thing was the burst scholarship as you just heard and we approved uh four

120million dollars in uh 11t grant funding i have to thank miss owsley for being on top of these types of things you know she's on top of so many things whether it's our different funds whether it's our um s her money 11t i just i appreciate the fact that she's on top of it so there's an application that is out and this money is targeted money that has to be allocated to very particular groups but the the capture for us will be uh four million dollars or a potential for four million dollars and that's significant money for us and i'm glad that the state is is doing that uh and then the last thing we talked was just a little bit about the the budget process you know and and it appears that right now

121the legislature and the governor are are in tune with one another as far as expecting the budget process to to coincide with the end of our fiscal school year and so obviously it'd be welcome news for us to be able to realize how we're going to fund our schools going forward next year without having to to wait for that information and no per pupil uh increases and that kind of thing and right now we're on a good track so that's what we talked about right yeah michael uh treasurer gerby so that the 11t was interesting and it's it's state money but it's esser it's federal money to the state and levante is a subsection of of that is that correct that's my understanding unless you want to add to it got it thank you okay

122any other questions for brad all right seeing none we will move to administration updates dr latch okay my primary update tonight is to talk about a proposed millage renewal a possible proposed millage renewal and this is as trustee gerbie was mentioning we're finishing up series three which one you know we're talking about technology refresh one of our final projects is also the middle school gym is going to be redone um which is going to be great so anyway uh here's an update as to where we're at so uh initially the capital projects team along with king scott which is the architect that's been helping us with this process did a needs assessment went throughout all the buildings went on all our grounds and determined that there were various needs and millions of dollars in in

123needs uh in the future to keep our district relevant moving forward and provide um a great instruction for our students and so um after that we started to meet with focus groups and as you know uh mr raft is now in the role of principle of operations so he was starting to help lead those along with king scott to look at different aspects of the bond and what you know what was most important for the community and these various groups thing discussions about steam technology transportation athletics the infrastructure all those were were coming up in those focus groups 12 of those in total from a diverse group of stakeholders and then as feedback started to come in we were certainly listening about well you know what where does the focus need to lie and some

124of the shifting that's going on is it needed to make sure that we had um making sure the educational focus was really at the forefront and so that was coming out in those focus groups as well mr raph then circled back to various groups and what's happening now is revision of what that proposed millage renewal is going to look like the other thing that we did is we did hire a survey company which is a reputable group that in short they call till they get 400 at least 400 people in the community to give them feedback on a series of questions there's a 15 to 20 minute phone interview and in essence they're trying to determine the likelihood of support based on these various things that could be in a millage renewal and and and

125so they're gathering that information that just happened last week where they were able to share that data so now we're taking that uh the capital projects team and king scott and really crunching the numbers and then determining what will be you know the final proposal that's brought forward that would have the best opportunity for community support and so that's where we are now we're going to be um teasing that out over the course of the next three weeks and then the plan at the board table would be that a more formalized uh report and and at the may 10th board meeting and then seeking action at the last board meeting of the month may 24th to uh say here is the proposal and then ask for the trustees to provide feedback and then ultimately vote

126on uh supporting that moving forward so that that's an update oh and that i did want to add this is not related to that but tomorrow night or tomorrow afternoon i'm looking forward to we have ted talk going on at the high school which is going to be really exciting basically student run where they're going to have all these ted talks um from four to seven p.m at the audit in the auditorium and i'm actually i'm very much looking forward to that event all right thank you very much julian um all right well i'll start with our spring sports uh well they've begun we had some baseball games to softball games water polos getting at it um and i mean it all seems great it's you know 70 and sunny right now who who doesn't

127want to be who doesn't want to be hanging out outside but i also i wouldn't be surprised if i i'm saying i think we're going to get at least one more day of snow from from my experience of living in michigan i'm not saying i want it i'm just saying i'm i'm trying to humble myself right now with with the great weather um but i'm looking forward to you know seeing a new set of sports come by and um cheer on my classmates because it's gotten a lot more fun especially as a senior um and then secondly i'd like to acknowledge our valedictorian varsity soccer player club leadership role holding jason chan he's actually back there can you stand up i like your shirt so you we saw him playing uh great job i jazz

128band is sweet i don't know how you guys don't have a strong fan base yet because i'd like to hear that every day walking into school but on top of his schoolwork club work and you know athletics and also musical talent he's been working at burger king for two years now and he applied for and received a scholarship called the king scholarship from the burger king foundation which is given to one person per region and which for us is the entire midwestern region and i was chosen off of gpa community involvement which jason has no lack of his name's all over the place um so they threw a nice little event at the burger king here in celine and we have some pictures we had a couple we had a lot of guys come out

129and um it was a nice event to see i've never seen a burger king balloon or a burger king jack though they're both pretty cool to see um i don't want the balloons to take away from your achievements jason but the burger king balloons are pretty cool uh and then on the next slide it's a nice picture of me with my crown hat and then also you know the fabulous jason chen um and then our nice picture of chen with his burger king scholarship so congratulations man he's attending northwestern in the fall studying data science on a pre-med track so his hard work has not even begun yet sorry man well congratulations jason wow congratulations and and i don't know i it would be nice to have the vic valedictorian come back and and talk

130a little bit at a future board meeting that's all i'm saying could be an invitation looming um trustee comments would anyone like to make an update yeah brett i have one thing and it's completely selfish happy birthday graham 14 years old today and dad's here so happy birthday graham that's a special kid to me too so happy birthday to graham i did win it i i um i've been getting some feedback on um i i think from people who have been participating in the focus groups um and so one thing that i've been thinking about as um the the small microscope that i have of my of the experiences of my own three children um and how diverse their educational experiences have been their interests their sports involvement their um arts involvement and all of

131those those pieces um one thing is i've talked to a variety of variety of people and um hope to continue to talk to a variety of people um about their vision for um the district is that my hope is that should um should we move forward with this that the idea is that we would be thinking with the lens of both and and not either or so um in our household many of you know we have 15 year old twins who couldn't be more different other than they came from the same womb so um when we're thinking about these things at our household um we're thinking about the things that um that one one of one one person in our family would love to see more emphasis in the arts and performance um and then

132another member of our whole household would love to see um some emphasis on um the southwest consortium would love to see some emphasis on athletics and all of those things and so um i think that it's important for our community to consider that um that there that there are a variety of students a variety of ideas a variety of visions and so rather than canceling one idea for another just considering both and and one thing that i know about celine is that we are full of innovation and so thinking about how um how we can leverage that innovation to meet the needs of the variety of students that we have so that is that is what i've been thinking about i did two things um just a reminder to the board that um it hasn't

133been announced yet but on thursday next week at six or seven i'm not sure there's going to be the annual wisd budget presentation and we as a board have one month to approve accept accept or not the the the budget they put forward so because they're holding it virtually this year we figured there might be a few more people in attendance but i i will be attending and i suspect you will too as well superintendent lodge maybe okay um this week i was at the uh this past week this has been a whirlwind week for me i was at the national science teachers association in houston texas and uh listened to some fascinating people uh scientists world-renowned medical leaders talking about science misinformation disinformation that's been going on uh some fascinating sessions i brought back

134piles of posters and calendars and so forth some of which i might even be able to share but the the coolest thing i discovered was um an electron microscope from hitachi that i think for five six seven thousand dollars we could outfit the board with or at least have have one out for us to play with uh we looked at some fascinating things through it yeah i know you could yeah but it was a fantastic uh vendor hall and so forth and uh it was so it was our first in-person presentation or conference like that that i've been to in two years of course obviously and uh more to come the next one's gonna be in chicago which is only four hours away by wolverine you know so expect to see some of us there

135anyway thank you for letting me share thanks anybody else nope um i just wanted to remind everybody about the foundation for saline area schools event on april 28th at imagine theater includes dinner movie and auction items they are taking registrations right now so please go to i believe at supportfsas.org to get your ticket um and thank you to the foundation for everything that they do and all of their wonderful volunteers um i also wanted to personally just say thank you to parents who write in and give us feedback um and share their their student stories we appreciate and and respect you um that's it um moving on to the consent agenda i wanted to just uh in in the lens of operational efficiency i won't be reading the consent agenda any longer um we'll be

136making sure that everything continues to be listed in the minutes so i would like to please entertain a motion to authorize the listed items as part of the consent agenda so move jones candace thank you yeah does this um updated printed agenda include the the recent additional field trip okay just wanted to be sure no thank you for clarifying um it's the grand haven one okay thank you thank you support then i guess then jenny's all in on that all right excellent all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing none motion carry seven zero uh enclosing items scheduled for our next agenda athletic department update will be at the next meeting with ashley and jeff okay we look forward to seeing them back here now that they've had a little bit of time to

137immerse themselves betty i don't have any public comment forms is that correct okay we're going to skip over that piece and acknowledge that we had no second public comment our next meeting the next agent or the next regular board of education meeting will be held on april 26 2022 at 6 30 pm i'd like to now please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education meeting for april 12 2022 at 8 46 pm so moved jenny thank you michael thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing on motion carry 7-0 we are adjourned